#dhmis bigger boy room

[dhmis-tournament]

ROUND ONE

[sherbetyy]

Oiii it’s the bigger boiiis. Are other people gonna draw them?? I don’t see a lotta fanart.

[hiya-im-mary]

Possibly unpopular opinion: Stain Edwards should’ve gotten genuinely mad at the trio! Maybe fighting-

Stain deserves better

[ink-asunder]

Wait, we're all clear that the experiment is Stain Edwards, right? Or am I just... totally missing something...

[sentientpaperbag]

some blue girl sketches cuz idk if i’ve actually posted some stuff relating to the actual show lmao???

[inbarfink]

A lot of 'Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared' is built upon a sort of inherent surrealism in young children’s edutainment. Because the thing is that for a lot of those shows it’s more important to, well, entertain-slash-educate the target audience of Literal Toddlers than it is to present a coherent world and story. DHMIS just takes this sort of dream-like world that is created as a result of these priorities and reframes it in a serious manner for an adult audience as an element of horror and/or tension. One example is the ages of the characters.

In a lot of those sorts of shows, preschool-and-under-puppet-shows (and sometimes cartoon shows), the ages of the puppet characters are kinda abstract. Again, the main priority isn’t really to make them feel like an accurate representation of a person who could exist in the real world. The ages of a lot of these characters is basically “young enough so that their emotional maturity and worldview is relatable to our preschool target audience, but old enough so that they can go on various misadventures that are also entertaining to our preschool audience without the worry of stuff like parental supervision”. 

So these characters have the same presumed understanding of the world as the children in the audience, usually need to be taught basic concepts and live-action adults would generally interact with them in a similar way one would a child - but on the other hand they usually treat themselves as a separate category from the live-action children they might also interact with, and are allowed to do a whole bunch of stuff an actual live-action kid on that same show wouldn’t be allowed to do -

Like drive vehicles -

Or work with heavy machinery - 

Or cook -

Or generally just live unsupervised without it being a big deal.

So yeah, the DHMIS trio all kinda live on different points of this spectrum of Ambiguously Childlike Puppets. They primarily interact with ‘teachers’ who explain to them basic concepts most adults would understand, and who generally regard them in a condescending manner (even when these teachers seem like children themselves).

When Yellow Guy meets Lesley, she also addresses him as one would a child. The existence of the Big Boy and Bigger Boy Rooms imply that our protagonist’s floor might be actually called something like the “Little Boys Room”. But they all have some aspects that make this reading a bit complicated, just in different ways.

Yellow Guy feels like the most ‘childlike’ puppet. He has the most simpleminded and naive worldview, the one who is most likely to go along with the ‘lessons’ of the teachers. Even when he becomes fully-charged and thus turns into the most intelligent and emotionally-mature character in the entire show - characters like the Teachers, the Big and Bigger Boys and Lesley all address him like a surprisingly clever kid instead. Plus he dresses in the most obviously childlike way. And possibly the most important factor, he has a father who is significantly taller and bigger than him -

Which definitely implies one is a child and another is an adult.

But… not only is he, urm, ‘recruited’ to a factory job. But he explicitly worked exactly 40 years until his retirement. With the ‘default retirement age’ in the UK being around 66 years, that might instead imply Yellow is in his mid-to-late 20’s instead. Plus, despite the implications that he is a child due to being considerably shorter than Roy - as an old man with a wife and child of his own, he actually remained the exact same size as his younger self. 

Which would imply that whatever Yellow Guy is a child or an adult, he is at least adult-sized-enough for his ‘species’.

He is also ‘recruited’ as the ‘Mummy’ in Lily and Todney’s family.

And his fantasy (memory?) of Mulhoven, he sees himself as living on his own. 

Red Guy, meanwhile, is on the other end of the spectrum. With his adult-human-like physique and very non-cartoon voice - it’s pretty intuitive to read him as an adult. Continuing the whole Roy Point, Red Guy is consistently shown as being around the same size as other adult ‘Red Guys’ - if not actually on the taller side of things.

And he is seen holding an ‘adult’ job not just in ‘Jobs’ (which you can argue is just some sort of Briefcase-powered pocket dimension where child labor is legal) but also in the ‘real world’ segments of Dreams…. Which, well, has a higher chance of being Actually Real, at the very least.

‘Dreams’ also shows a picture of him graduating from... somewhere? 

Plus, he tends to talk back to the teachers more. Which makes him feel more like an adult being condescended to. But then again, the affectations of an adult or a child being condescended too can be quite similar. At the end of the day, the primary things that make his adulthood ambiguous is that he does sometimes need basic concepts explained to him -

And that he does generally regard the other puppets, including the much more childish Yellow Guy as his peers. Even after arguing that he should be the ‘father figure’ of the household, he still ends up calling Yellow his ‘brother’.

And Duck is in sort of an interesting position, on one level he is more ‘adult-y’ than Red Guy, but on another level he is just as childish as Yellow Guy.

Physically he is even shorter than Yellow Guy, and his voice is much too cartoony to peg him as a child or an adult. He ALSO has a graduation photo....

His sense of fashion, his hobbies (reading the newspaper and doing the crossword) and even his chair of choice (a rocking-chair) are all pretty adult, or even old-man-like (compare Yellow Guy’s childish little stool, and Red Guy’s relatively neutral sofa). 

But he also likes the same show as the very childish Yellow Guy (although it is a Wallace and Gromit parody and that’s really an all-ages franchise, although it IS notable that it's Red Guy who thinks it's boring and predictable). He is pretty likely to push back against the teachers, although mostly when their lessons clash against his own ego. A behavior that is both mature and immature at the same time. In general with most of what Duck does, it's not necessarily easy to peg his behavior between an insecure grown-up or a child trying to act like an adult.

For example, the ‘Memories’ sequence in ‘Death’ has this memory of Duck ‘telling Yellow Guy about the military’. 

Yellow Guy’s words and their positioning is deliberately meant to invoke a specific cultural image of, like, a father or grandfather telling a child about their service. But what Duck is actually ‘telling’ Yellow about is just a very childish and uninformed gushing about military might. ("They're invincible!")

I guess my biggest point is the way this ambiguity can be used as part of DHMIS’ atmosphere of unease. It’s like… no matter how you read the ages of the characters, their situation is utterly fucked up - just in different ways.

If all of the puppets are all adults, then the way they have been robbed of their agency and the absolute lack of control they have over their own life becomes even more disturbing. The condescending and controlling way the teachers tend to treat them becomes even worse. Especially how they have been convinced of their own inability to do anything on their own. See, Yellow and Duck's apprehension about taking the car for a ride in "Transport":

It's just us three! We can't just... do stuff, us three. Can we?

I told you, you shouldn't try and do something without a little... thing telling you how to do it.

This isn’t just about the car - the point is that Duck says “try and do something”. Meaning anything. There is really nothing Duck can imagine the trio can do that they can do alone without the supervision of an ‘authority figure’. This would already be pretty fucked-up if they were kids, but as adults it’s an even darker situation. No wonder their life is so bleak and terrifying. 

If one is to read the puppets as kids instead, then it is also pretty disturbing how much they are left to their own devices. I mean, yeah, their life is robbed of all agency - but they lack any sort of real adult emotional support. Kids don’t just need adults to Teach Stuff to them or Stop Them From Doing Wrong Things, they need general advice and help and support and reassurance and role models and adult kindness and the DHMIS Trio doesn’t get any of this.

The characters’ utter isolation from anyone who isn’t a ‘teacher’ is already pretty fucked-up if they’re adults - but if you see them all as kids, it’s even darker. No one can help them mitigate pressures during interpersonal conflicts, no one to comfort and take care of them when things get rough, no positive example they can aspire and emulate. They all basically have to alternate being the ‘responsible adult’ for each other. And if they are all kids, this is really dark. No wonder they and their relationships are so fucked-up.

And if you see only some of them as kids, like for example, I think the most popular fan interpretation is that Yellow Guy’s a kid and the other two are adults? I think it is a valid read of the situation but that also comes with it’s own layer of fucked-upness with the power dynamics now at play. Like, every time Duck or Red Guy mistreat Yellow Guy, it’s not just them being assholes. They’re being assholes to a child, when they are the adults who are - by default of being the only adults consistently around in his life - are responsible for.

And no matter how you’d try and shake it, it’ll always come off pretty fucked-up. Like, if you have Red Guy as a Token Kid then it’s a matter of a child being forced into a Responsible Adult position basically by being the most grounded person in the household. If Duck's the only adult than, like, oh god who put THIS guy in charge of taking care of two children? And so on and so on… 

 No matter which path you take, it’s always very dark, and very DHMIS…

[ultimateloserboy]

every once in a while i think about that one interview where the creators of dhmis said that yellow guy was the only character capable of actually exploring the world. it makes me think a lot. especially about the big boys.

sometimes i think that maybe red guy and duck got stuck in the big boys rooms because of how bitter they are. in the creators own words, yellow guy is the only one in the group that is willing to actually look into things without being overly cynical about everything. red guy and duck slowly give in to the world, they slowly lose faith in being good people and see no reason to be good at all. they lose their hope for anything better. they eventually end up with a “this is as good as it gets” attitude. this is why i think there isnt a big version of yellow guy. because yellow guy NEVER thinks like that. with or without his batteries yellow guy doesnt think like the other two. they think too negatively to even consider a positive outcome, while yellow guy, as bonkers as he usually is, has a more reasonable look at things because he isnt miserably bitter

i know that the big boys recognize yellow guy when he walks in, i think the bigger boys even asked him where he had been or something like that. “we’ve been waiting for you” or something. i dont think this implies that yellow guy has a big counterpart, i think this is a callback to what yellow guy said earlier in the episode. he had a whole conversation about how the other two “arent in charge of him” despite what they may think. red guy and duck think that yellow guy will go along with anything they do. if they get bigger they expect yellow guy to as well. it might be because they view him as stupid, or it could be because they’re always stuck together so they assume he’ll be apart of everything they do, but either way they expect him to give up on the world like they do. but he doesnt. no matter what happens, yellow guy has the childhood wonder and curiosity that red guy and duck are too grouchy and old to have. thats why he finds the book, thats why he knows what he does and asks what he asks, not because of the batteries, but because hes kind. red guy and duck destroy themselves and each other. they think theyre sooo fucking smart but theyre literally doing nothing. just sitting around in rooms. but yellow guy has hope despite everything. i dont have faith that theres anything better in the dhmis world. honestly, im pretty sure in the same article i was mentioning earlier (although it could be a different one) its mentioned that the audience want yellow guy to be happy but he “NEVER will be”. and the transport episode really drives home (haha get it) the idea that theres really nothing better outside of the house. so even me as an audience member has lost faith, just like red guy and duck, but yellow guy hasnt and thats so sad to me. theres a part of me that wishes so bad that he’s right, that there really is something better, but as the creators said, there never will be

unless theyre fucking with us of course, which wouldnt be surprising

idk this shits confusing its all metaphorical and sad and all that gay shit

[tinnieaus]

Purgatory AU ( tag Purgatory Dhmis AU)

(🔞⚠️Triggers ⚠️🔞 death, gore, child death, cult activities(sacrifices, rituals), suggestive, nsfw)

The Teachers, trapped souls. For one reason or another they were picked to endure a never ending loop of torture. They don't know if it's entertainment for some god or if it's a punishment. But they're here, and they can choose whether of not to try and keep themselves sane or give in.

Sketchpad (Paige), the oldest 'Teacher'

The longest stay in purgatory

has forgotten her name, her story, her age, and how she died

was alone for the longest time before Tony had arrived

shes a little unhinged, but still cares for those around her and has empathy

tries to help everyone else with their 'changes' knowing how traumatic it was going through it alone

friendly to everyone, only changes her tone why they're mean to her

Tony, the Leader

very much suffering 24/7

anxiety 24/7

holding on by a thread, thanks to sketch

closest to sketch, okay with colin, iffy about the rest, despises Shrignold

cries when overwhelmed

Shirgnold, the cultist

very unhinged

creepy and unsettling to the others

was already a bit crazy when he arrived, has just let himself go completely

does not give a crap about staying sane

seems to target Larry, Colin and fridge for some reason

Colin, the Nerd

very iritable and snappy with everyone

not handling anything well at all

will scream if someone tries to touch him

really freaked out by Shrignold

tolerates Tony and Sketch

cries when alone

Steve and spinach (Samantha), the father and daughter

very protective of his daughter

depressed and tired 24/7

gets along well with tony, fridge, sketch, and larry

not afraid to stab a bitch if they touch his kid

spinach is too young to understand what is happening

only talks and interacts with others when her dad is around

feels safe around her dad and fridge

really likes fridge

thinks Larry is cool

Fridge(Fredric) and bread boy(Bonnie), father and son

fridge is jumpy and on edge 24/7

sticks close to steve, feels comfortable to be around another parent

doesn't trust anyone but steve to be alone with BB

over-protective of BB

too terrified to kill anyone, but will fight if threated

One by one the unfortunate souls wake up in a brightly colored house. Each have no recollection of their name, their life story, their existence before now. They can remember just moment before their death, the emotions, the colors, shapes. Then the light they walked towards that inevitably brought them to where they reside now.

The doctors office

If a Teacher gets hurt for any reason, they can go to the Doctor. The dark room holds two beds, two cabinets and an unseen figure that stands outside the light of the bright lights pointed at the beds. Each teacher has visted at least once, for something small like a cut or cough, and something big, limbs torn off and on the brink of death. Even cold, seemingly dead body's can be brought to the Doctor and they'll walk out as if nothing happened. Whoever made this place knew violence would be prevalent and brought the best doctor on board.

The longer the teachers exist in the purgatory, the more cartoony they become. At some point they become completely 'cartoon' and can change into their 'object' form (aside from shrig, into his bugiffied form) but for everyone but Sketch are unable to do it. The transition from human to cartoon starts with simple things like clothes, appearing in the purgatory in a different set of clothes that hints to the person's cartoony end goal. The skin color changes, maybe some facial/structural changes that happen throughout the process, added limbs, loss of limbs, hair changing colors, eye color, height.

Rooms in the house

The rooms in the house seem to be made specially made for certain Teachers. Each Teacher has a room, decorated, set up, and painted specially for them. Each time a Teacher arrives, the hall upstairs gets bigger, longer and adds a new room. The hall is unusually long compared to the layout of the house. The rooms shift and break geometrical and logical rules as it changes to fit the souls living inside. None of the teachers are able to leave the house

[acomputeryguy]

I Don’t like the “Yellow Guy is David, Lesley’s Son” theory. Here’s why...

To quote one of our favourites, I just think it’s really boring.

I was so looking forward to Film Theory’s take on C4′s DHMIS because I thought if anyone was going to blow that theory out of the water, it’d be him. Boy oh boy was I wrong.

Not only did he spend the majority of the video recapping the events of the last two episodes, he didn’t even mention the conversation Duck and Red Guy have whilst Yellow Guy ascends the stairs.

That is one of the main pieces of contradictory evidence to the Yellow Guy is Lesley’s Son theory in my opinion.

The significance of that conversation alongside Duck and Red Guy being the only ones in the Big and Bigger Boys’ rooms; it suggests they are aware of how things work whilst Yellow Guy is kept in a perpetual state of not-knowing... Until he is triggered enough to remember, re-discovers what he has already learnt several times before, then ends up unaware all over again. This is alluded to in his contribution to the episode 5 theme song. Notice Duck is the only one to obviously react to that. The camera focuses in on his reaction alone. I strongly believe that before the events of episode 5, Duck is the only one who has “ascended” to the upper floors.

Being serious for a second though, I get there’s no real meaning or grand plan behind this series and that it could be explained away as merely using the cyclical theme of children’s television as an element of horror, BUT, because I’m so bothered by the accepted theory that Yellow Guy is Lesley’s son and he died in a car crash that either she caused or was present for, and this is her recreating her kid “David” out of grief, here are my own thoughts on it all...

When you examine what Lesley actually does to Yellow Guy and the others, it’s just subjecting them to awful situations and “resetting” them back to normal at the end of the day. That’s not a desperate act of grief. That’s calculating and deliberate.

And if Yellow Guy is “David”, Lesley’s son, why are Duck and Red Guy there? Who are they? Who were they, before? You could make the argument they were David’s favourite characters from his favourite TV show, but then why is Lesley putting them through the ringer every episode? Why is Yellow Guy the one that suffers the most compared to Red Guy and Duck? What kind of mother would want to see her son terrified and upset all of the time, and then bring his favourite characters to life, just to have them bully and belittle him? And torture them in front of him too?

If Roy was her husband, and Yellow Guy’s dad, and Lesley viewed him as this abusive figure responsible for the death of her son, then why does she keep tormenting Yellow Guy with him? He’s used against Yellow Guy as a device to hurt and confuse him all of the time. It just doesn’t make any sense.

This theory also assumes Yellow Guy’s dream about Mullhoven was an event that actually happened instead of Lesley just... orchestrating a dream for him where this new town Red Guy wants to drive them to looks nice on the surface but is actually slightly off in ways, all in a bid to force him back to reality. Note: until Yellow Guy is startled awake and the car starts to break down, he and Duck were perfectly content escaping the house, because Red Guy had placated them so well that anything she could do to influence them ended up being ineffective.

As for the number plate - of course it has her name. She’s the one driving the events. Even the thing Red Guy thinks of as freedom is actually all under Lesley’s control.

The events of episode 5 feel more to me like Lesley was willing to indulge them in their “escape” since Red Guy was so determined about it, but then she had to teach him the hard way why trying to leave isn’t acceptable. She had to intervene when Red Guy sends Yellow Guy off to sleep to dream happily about their new house, and new town, with their new neighbours. They all had to be taught that there’s nothing better waiting for them outside because the Sat Nav didn’t manage to do the job for her. I mean its recommendations of where to go basically consist of a place with a famous dead horse and a place that “just shrivelled up”, but Red Guy wasn’t willing to accept that and kept pushing them forwards anyway. Since Lesley couldn’t deter them with her usual props, she had to “get creative” and mess with Yellow Guy to get things back on track.

Which, as an aside, is perhaps why he is “one of her favourites”. Because he is so easily manipulated. Her interactions with Yellow Guy later make one thing clear: she is very fond of him, but she can’t coddle him. She has to keep him on his toes. He has to dance to her tune, ultimately, because he’s a creation meant to entertain, and the main rule in all writing is that your characters are never allowed to be too happy so long as there’s a story happening on the page.

Moving on, after episode 5, Red Guy is suddenly very keen to maintain the status quo which was jarring to some people. They felt he changed too quickly, but if you view Transport as his “ascending” the stairs moment, where unlike Yellow Guy he can’t be easily fooled and manipulated back into forgetting everything, his sudden desire to do as he’s told makes perfect sense. Like Duck, he now knows the way this place works. And in that muffled conversation in episode 6, they are discussing the possibility of Yellow Guy learning what they know. Neither he nor Duck are comfortable with the idea of Yellow Guy being on their level.

Why?

Very probably because Yellow Guy with batteries might not be able to be placated. Had he learnt the truth of their reality and retained it, their entire world would have come crashing down. And then what is there? No nice friendly house with its pretty colours and sing-song lessons, but a grim, drab reality, which Red Guy has already taken them all to before.

If we view Lesley as a stand-in for a creative person - someone who makes things (writes, creates art, etc) - then the allegory becomes clear: DHMIS is her escape from reality. It’s what she can do, what she is good at, what she enjoys, but she also has to be a little twisted as that is what makes the art she is creating entertaining. She has to take these cute little characters, and clatter them violently around the dollhouse they live in. She is as trapped in that house as Red Guy, Yellow Guy, and Duck are, and if she’s not careful, they can take on a life of their own and find themselves outside of what she intends for them.

Very interesting actually that Transport is the episode where we get a direct comment about what happened to Wakey, Wakey, and the episode where Lesley’s creations try to run away from her.

My personal understanding is that Lesley, with her patchwork appearance and colourful clothes, is the embodiment of the three creative minds behind the show: Sloan, Pelling, and Terry. We have three main characters too, it’s worth pointing out. They do say three is a magic number in writing...

Anyway, after episode 5, Red Guy learns what Yellow Guy almost learnt. He and Duck have “ascended” - they are completely self-aware about where they are, what their purpose is, and what they have to do to keep the days ticking over, even if the content of past lessons/episodes becomes vague to them over time. 

Their one job now is to keep Yellow Guy innocent of it all.

I mean I personally find that to be a far more interesting situation than this is all the work of a grieving mother who likes to torture her dead kid for some inexplicable reason. That theory, to me, does away with the actual horror of DHMIS: that our trio are trapped and can never escape, are utterly beholden to somebody else’s whims whether they are aware of it or not, and are doomed to an eternity of torment for the sake of entertainment. As are all fictional characters...

So, yeah. Yellow Guy is Lesley’s child, but the kind of child any fictional character is to the mind that created them. You love them, but you unfortunately have to hurt them. For the good of the story, to entertain, and as Lesley says herself, sometimes just because it’s funny.

Disclaimer: This isn’t to say he can’t be David, of course, and that he’s not actually dead. I think there’s a lot of compelling evidence that he may be the David that is mentioned and that he, like Red Guy and Duck, have “died” in some way before ending up where they are. I just personally don’t like the assumption Yellow Guy was/is Lesley’s actual, real-born son who died in a car crash, and this is her attempt to recreate him.

[lapinpuff]

BIG DHMIS series spoilers!!!

Below is my in-depth analysis of the Big and Bigger boys from episode 6, "Electricity" :)

So, a lot of people, me included at first, were a little confused by the part of Electricity where Yellow meets strange, new, questionably smart versions of Duck and Red Guy. After a bit of thinking, I've cooked up my own observations and theories, but keep in mind this is just my perception and...isn't really very good!

So, to start off, what are they?

In my opinion, these are past or alternate versions/copies (Lesley has copies of presumably each character, remember?) of the Duck and Red we currently know in the show. I suppose they went through something similar to what Yellow does in Electricty, and became "enlightened", or self-aware of their situation.

Instead of escaping, though (perhaps they physically can't, or they were sucked into the perceived security of their looping lives regardless), they seem content enough to live in tiny rooms above the others...physically, but also in the sense that they look down on our Red, Duck and Yellow for not being as "smart" as them. While the Bigger Boys don't seem to outright judge Yellow (suggesting they actually are quite intelligent, as they know he's at least on their level), the Big Boys do judge and ridicule him, implying the extent of their intelligence is actually just a pair of superiority complexes.

Why do I think they're past, "upgraded" versions of our protagonists? Well, it's in the eyes! Yellow Guy, upon getting new batteries, has green eyes. His famous favourite colour. Now look at the eyes on the Boys. You'll notice Duck has red eyes and Red has blue—their favourites! Furthermore, they comment about how they've been waiting for Yellow to join them for a while. To me, this reads as them having become "enlightened" one day in the past (maybe not at the same time, though), ascending the stairs, and entering their new room. Lesley simply replaced them downstairs with new dolls/copies. They've been waiting for Yellow because, deep down, they do care for him. Or, at least, they want company beyond each other.

The Big Boys are, obviously, very conceited, condescend Yellow, and do their best to LOOK stereotypically intelligent rather than act it—they wear glasses, plain clothes, have larger, longer bodies, and have covered their room in seemingly random knowledge. They don't even seem to use their new bodies. They're just for show. On top of this, they engage in pointless, nonsensical lessons and seem HAPPY about this. They think they're free. They think they're the best. They, likely, are so deeply stuck in this lie that they haven't even considered going up the stairs to find out there are, indeed, people above them. "Better" than them. In convincing themselves they're intelligent, they're keeping themselves trapped and naive. Their idea of intelligence itself is ignorant, to summarise!

And this is why Yellow can't stay with them. Because he sees through their lies, sees the strings on the puppet teachers, and knows he doesn't fit in there any more than he does with the Red and Duck downstairs.

The next level, the Bigger Boys, is extremely fascinating to me! The room is plain and unfurnished because these two don't seem to have any desire to prove themselves. It emulates a practical laboratory setting. The pair's designs are uncanny and futuristic, suggesting to me that they've replaced their own flesh with robotic parts. My only theory on this is that they now know the dangers of their lives and their tendency to die/get hurt, so have transferred to protective bodies that can't be wounded (/as badly). Note that only Red's head is robotic (he tends to get head-related injuries) whereas Duck's whole body is (he tends to get maimed in an assortment of horrific ways).

Their attitude is pretty interesting. They seem serene and not cruel to Yellow, appearing to share his level of newfound intelligence. They've seen through the lies of the teachers and don't need nor want them, so the teachers have stopped trying and left them alone. Still, maybe so they'd have something to do, or maybe to feed their new knowledge-hungry brains, the Bigger Boys turned to teaching themselves. And, subconsciously, they've become a mirror of their own past suffering—they trap and torture a poor creature, as they were trapped and tortured, just for the sake of it. Just to "learn" useless stats. It's actually quite sad. Their comment about not remembering what that creature once was, before they melted it down into that form, unsettled me. If we want to be dark, it could be a past teacher. If we want to be even darker, it could have been a past copy of one of the three of them. Ouch!

To conclude, in their intelligence, the Bigger Boys have lost their emotional intelligence. They don't seem happy, like the Big Boys were. They seem lost and vaguely sad, directionless even. That's why they're cruel. It's all they can be to fill the void. And, like the Big Boys, the Bigger Boys lie to themselves to cope with this—they tell each other that the creature might enjoy being tortured after all. This is...a blatant lie, and I'm sure they know it deep down. Duck even seems keen to experiment on Red, who we know he considers his best friend. I believe the Bigger Boys' lack of care for other living things prevents them from ascending further and realising that there is, again, more levels above them...

And again, that's why Yellow leaves. Their cruelty, serene or not, disturbs and upsets him far too much. He's too loving for their lives. He doesn't fit in with them, no more than he does with the Big Boys. The only place he almost fits in is with Lesley, and even she doesn't want him to stay. This sequence of events made me think for a long, long time...🥲

And that's why this ramble was so long! Please forgive me, ha. I just get excited about sharing my thoughts. So, thank you if you read this far!! You're a star!!! :D ☆

[author-updates]

Something weird I noticed while looking through Dhmis theories, specifically theories relating to Lesley is how literal everyone takes her actions/lines. While, to me at least, she's way more ambiguous/abstract. Not everything she says/does should be taken at face value.

For example, when Lesley and Green Eyed Yellow Guy are cleaning the bottom floor of the doll house; they're putting new dolls of the three characters around the kitchen table along with cleaning up the previous mess that was there. While they're putting the dolls down, Yellow Guy accidentally pops the head off of Duck's doll. Yet, we don't get a scene change of Duck suddenly dying. If the doll house was a literal manifestation of the house, instead of a metaphorical one, the "real" Duck should have been killed and replaced just like the doll. We also see Yellow Guy's doll sitting around the table, even though Yellow Guy isn't actually down there yet.

It's possible that the doll house doesn't become "real" until Lesely cranks the handle, spinning the house and resetting the loop. This would give the characters an amount of agency. As Lesley can't literally control them in a physical way. For example, I doubt Lesley can physically stop from leaving, by, for example, picking up the dolls and holding them in place. But what she can do is reset the loop and replace them.

It's unclear how replacing a doll actually affects the character. If the doll house doesn't become reality until the handle is cranked, then we don't actually see the effects of Lesely replacing Duck's doll, as the episode ends before a new loop or "episode" is played out.

It's also hard to say if replacing a doll does anything to a character because we haven't really seen that happen? I mean, I can say with pretty good certainty that Lesley replaced a doll at some point, judging by the way she readily has a spare Duck doll on hand. But, unlike the web series, the character's die way a less. I'm pretty sure the only time we really see one of the characters (the main three) get seriously hurt or die is in Jobs. It's possible that the three characters got replaced, or at least, Red Guy and Yellow Guy, did when the song started up again and they were placed in their pre-time skip bodies. We can also assume that the three characters got replaced at the end of the Transport episode, as we don't actually see the dolls in the car. So it can be assumed that characters have been replaced with different dolls, but we don't know for sure when that happened, or if it does something to the character.

It's entirely possible that replacing a doll affects memories, but it's also entirely possible that it doesn't. That replacing a doll does absolutely nothing, either because the doll represents the character, and thus will be affected by the character's changes, not the other way around, or because of a completely different reason.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is also just a very metaphorical show in general, not JUST how the dolls/Lesley works. Another theory that gets tossed around is that Yellow Guy has walked up the stairs before, and seen Lesley before. I don't think that's the case; I think Yellow Guy first walked up the stairs for the very first time in Electricity.

I know in the episode we see the painting of Yellow Guy walking up the stairs, but I think that's either recording what's happening in that moment, or a metaphorical sign that what Yellow Guy is doing is Great and that a recording of it is needed, just a cool cinematography moment, or something else.

My main justification of this is how the characters act in the Big Boy and Bigger Boy rooms. Upon both times Yellow Guy walks into the room, something to the effect "Oh, you're finally here" is said. Something that would be..... odd to say if they already saw Yellow Guy. The tone in which they speak to Yellow Guy tells me that the other characters believe that Yellow Guy has reached some kind of enlightenment, and has gotten smarter, and thus belongs in the Big Boy or Bigger Boy room. Not that they're seeing Yellow Guy for a second or third time. It's possible that they simply don't remember the last time Yellow Guy was here, as they could be victims of the loops.

What really sells me on the theory that this is Yellow Guy's first time walking up the stairs is Lesley's reaction to him. I really get the sense that this is the first time Yellow Guy has walked up the stairs and met her, seeing as she doesn't say anything to the effect of Yellow Guy doing this before, or being here before. She even gives him the book, something I don't think she would have done this loop around if she had previously done so, and the book got destroyed.

Though, it's possible that she knew that the book would be destroyed, and is simply trying to instill the status qou by letting it get destroyed like it has before.

I doubt that though. As explained above Lesley doesn't actually have complete control of the three characters, the doll house is not a literal manifestation, and the dolls are not literally the characters.

Don't hug me is also just a very metaphorical show, a lot of the story telling is done using the idea of things, instead of the actual things. The teachers are a great example of this, as they're not actually the literal thing they're trying to teach the main three characters. They're more so what the thing represents, along with being their own character. Sure, the coffin represents a coffin, but it also wants the funeral to go along quickly, and it doesn't like when Duck keeps ringing the buzzer.

Because the show is set up like this, I feel that when you're trying to theorize about it, it's important to consider the themes and how information is played out. I don't think that we're going to get a lot of concrete answers about a lot of the questions we're asking, because Dhmis isn't about answering questions in a straightforward way. I would argue that doing so would betray the themes of the show.

[dhmis-tournament]

ROUND ONE

Battle of the ducks

[sherbetyy]

WHY DOES THIS FUCKING LOOK LIKE BIGGER BOY DUCK 💀

Please don’t ask it’s 1 am

[hiya-im-mary]

Stain Edwards - Part 1

( Part 2 is here!! )

I really like Stain a lot!! They’re my favourite in all of DHMIS!!!!! So much so that I’m still mad at the trio for how they treated them!!

Stain never got angry at them. Not once. They never tried to fight back when the others pushed them down and molded them into something!! Any time it happened,they just let out a little “Okay”,probably not wanting to cause a scene…after all,these people are their friends,right? Do friends do this? Do friends tell you what to do? And if so,why can’t they tell the other two what to do??

Stain always got pushed around. They never ever got a chance for justice!!! Even in the other rooms,like in the bigger boys room,it’s likely the experiment is Stain. They can never escape from being forced into roles that the other two,much more powerful ones!!

It frustrates me!! Not in a “This is bad writing” way cuz IT IS NOT!!! But more in a “I really like this person and I want to see them best what hurts them” type of way!!!!

Everyone always ends up calling Stain a thing. Each of the trio called them a thing at least once. Even when Yellow Guy was smart and saw the tortured,experimented Stain,he called them a thing!! They are always called an “It”. (Also people with it/it’s pronouns are SUPER DUPER MEGA COOL AND AMAZING!!!!) Stain was trying to be the same as them,but no one ever saw them to be on their level. An inferior!! Even when it first gained sentience,Yellow Guy was already disgusted and saw it as a lesser Just with the quote “Eugh…claymation…”

A lot of stuff that I see when it comes to how Stain is treated is how the others feel. How the others characterisations are analysed. Which is…oddly fitting. Stain was never treated on the same level as the others despite having a similar level of intelligence to them,maybe even moreso??

What about Stain themself? Not how they relate to others but how STAIN feels!!

Why doesn’t Stain get a happy ending? Why did no one care how they felt?? Why did no one care…??

Butttt…this post is getting a lil too long!!! Plz go to part two for the rest plz!!!!!!!

[adobe-outdesign]

With the concept of Channel 4’s DHMIS being a timeloop, there’s a chance the same events have happened but with the trio taking different places. How do you think things’d go? (e.g: Red being buried, Yellow becoming Mr. Peterson, Duck exploring the bigger and bigger rooms, etc)

Red being buried would completely derail that episode, because he wouldn't really annoy the coffin into having a mental breakdown like Duck. And I don't imagine Duck really ever going up to the bigger boy's rooms because he doesn't have a way to reach enlightenment suddenly like Yellow's batteries do.

[spogo1]

hey i wanna talk about my dhmis theory

so, in episode 6 of the new series yellow guy goes up and meets the "big" and "bigger" boys. now, we see the new versions of red guy and duck, but no new version of yellow guy. except... in the bigger boys room, there IS a third being. the experiment. I saw a theory stating that the experiment was actually stain edwards, but I firmly believed he replaced the og duck in death. and you would expect the 3 guys to be red yellow and duck, not red stain and duck.

so... I think the experiment is- was- bigger yellow guy. but it could also be stain. thinking about this just now whilst high, bear with me. I'm thinking like a loop thing. bigger yellow guy turns into stain. stain turns into duck. something like that. maybe stain was supposed to kill yellow instead.

also, as for the missing yellow in the big boys room, I think it's Roy and Roy wants a bigger piece of the pie. my main evidence for this is that we know Roy's limbs can stretch like the big boys. also the letter R is just a D with long legs.

thinking more about stain and yellow. maybe our yellow guy was originally with the bigger boys, when his batteries were new, and maybe got downgraded to the ground floor? maybe the experiment was originally ground floor yellow. I'll reread this when I'm not high